He's a Rebel
by justadram
Summary: Rapunzel's misguided and occasionally brilliant attempts at securing Eugene's heart as inspired by the sage advice of The Crystals, The Ronettes, The Shirelles, and other hopelessly naïve Girl Groups of the 50's and 60's. Eugene/Rapunzel
1. He's a Rebel

Title: _He's a Rebel_

Author: just_a_dram

Fandom: Tangled

Pairing: Rapunzel/Eugene

Rating: K+

Summary: Rapunzel's misguided and occasionally brilliant attempts at securing Eugene's heart as inspired by the sage advice of The Crystals, The Ronettes, The Shirelles, and other hopelessly naïve Girl Groups of the 50's and 60's.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction for which the author receives no profit.

Chapter 1 of 6

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><p>He's a Rebel<p>

1. He's a Rebel

"He's a rebel and he'll never ever be any good. He's a rebel 'cause he never ever does what he should. But just because he doesn't do what everybody else does, that's no reason I can't give him all my love."—_He's a Rebel_ by The Crystals.

"What was he doing climbing into your tower?" the Queen asked gently.

All of the details of Rapunzel's 'rescue' were coming out in drips and drabs. It seemed clear that the King and Queen were wise to the fact that to demand the Princess' story all at once would have pushed her too far, and he was grateful for that, feeling protective of her as he did. Protective enough to trade his life for hers—a fact that he could not quite explain.

All the same, Eugene wished this particular detail would not come to light. Thus far, questions about Eugene had been answered in what he'd come to know as typical Blondie fashion: "He's Eugene and he saved me. Isn't he wonderful?" That left him feeling uncomfortable, but not afraid for his tenure in the palace. Indeed, the King and Queen seemed to think him as wonderful as their daughter did, although he did not think that appraisal would continue if his story was properly fleshed out.

"Hiding," Rapunzel replied around a spoonful of rhubarb pudding.

Eugene's eyes darted from the Queen to Rapunzel, wishing he could wordlessly advise her to keep her lips sealed—_shut your trap_—on some pertinent details, but she would not understand why everyone should not know that Flynn Rider crawled into her tower with the Lost Princess' crown in his satchel. Gothel had warned her about men and thieves both, but in her experience both were inexplicably Charming. _Who could take issue?_

"From the Law," she finished, swallowing another oversized bite and biting her lower lip in barely contained enthusiasm. _This is her favorite part_, he thought with a sigh, the part where the best day of her life began thanks to the thief who crawled into her tower and ended up stuffed in the closet.

He was sure that if he had not delivered their daughter to them, the Queen's face would not have remained as serene at this pronouncement as it did. "From the Law," she parroted back, her eyes skimming over Eugene.

Did he look like Flynn or Eugene in this moment? The two were wholly distinct in Eugene's mind, and while he would have preferred at this awkward moment to have the confidence of Flynn, Eugene might serve him better within the walls of the palace. At least it was some relief to know that there was no way the Queen recognized him from his wanted posters—they always got his nose wrong, and the Queen no doubt spent very little time wandering the kinds of places they had been tacked up.

"Eugene doesn't do back-story, but I don't mind telling you. Flynn was a thief," Rapunzel announced with what sounded like pride, as she pushed the empty crystal sherbet glass away from herself.

Eugene coughed into his hand. "Uh, Princess," he began, turning pleading eyes at her.

"Not a very good one," Rapunzel continued, pulling her shoulders up to her ears. "I got the crown back from him and hid it."

There was no doubt about it now: they would draw the connection between Eugene Fitzherbert, who arrived hand in hand with their long lost daughter, and Flynn Rider, who stole the crown, was locked in the Royal Jail, and escaped in a most dramatic fashion. They weren't going to be pleased.

"Perhaps you're a better thief than Mister Fitzherbert," the King said with an indulgent smile for his daughter.

_They are more concerned with their daughter than they are with me. For now_.

"I'm quick with a frying pan," Rapunzel beamed. "So you don't have to be afraid," she assured her parents, ignorant to the fact that they only need call upon the palace guards should he pose the kind of threat she imagined they were anticipating.

He suspected they would eventually be concerned about the sanctity of more than the Crown Jewels.

"Besides, he's not a bad man. He's very good. Aren't you, Eugene?" she asked, looking at him with green eyes wide enough that he could lose himself in them. "His back-story might be different than mine, but he's always been very good to me."

_Always_. The woman she had thought was her mother—the only soul she had known in her eighteen years—had betrayed her, deceived her, used her, so while he had only known her a couple of days, he was the only one she could trust. The thief held the Lost Princess' heart in his hand.

He swallowed, his mouth gone dry. Both the King and Queen were looking expectantly at him. He wanted to crack wise. He wanted to laugh. Shrug. Shake his head at her naïveté. _I'm Flynn Rider, babe. You have no idea._

But that, he feared, would end with him staying in the stables. And he wasn't that close to Maximus.

"Listen," Eugene ventured even though he did not know what he was going to say to smooth the way—Flynn generally flew by the seat of his pants. But he was interrupted by Rapunzel, who finally seemed to have recognized that not everyone was comfortable with this line of questioning.

"You're not angry with Eugene, are you?" she asked, anxiously bringing her clasped hands beneath her chin.

"No, we're very thankful," the Queen began before Rapunzel rushed in once more.

"You won't take him away, will you?"

He could see that her unimaginably resilient cheerfulness in the face of what had happened to her was slipping away at the perceived threat. He balled the linen napkin in his lap in one hand, fisting it tightly. There was no way someone was going to separate her from him. Not even the King and Queen. He'd use a damn frying pan and smash his way out of here with her at his side if need be.

"You'll barely even know he's here. I'll take care of him. I had Pascal for years and Moth…" she stumbled, her cheeks turning pink.

The frog, which was perched on her shoulder, turned a rosy shade to match Rapunzel's dress, demonstrating how he could easily blend into the scenery, so to speak. Eugene groaned: Rapunzel drew no line between himself and her pet. A kept man. He'd never even conceived of belonging to someone. He was a lone wolf, a consummate bachelor, a man of the world.

Rapunzel stretched out a small hand to his and he took it in his, squeezing.

_Well_, better to be hers than someone else's. Perhaps he would even get used to it.

"No one will be sending Mister Fitzherbert away," the King said kindly. "For there's no cause for concern, is there?" he asked a little more sternly, leveling Eugene with a steely stare.

Eugene smiled thinly, feeling three sets of eyes upon him. He chuckled nervously. "Me?" he squeaked most embarrassingly. _Pull yourself together, buddy!_ Furrowing his brows and crooking a half-grin, he did his best to convey—_this guy's golden. _Just the kind of guy you can trust in a palace alone with a beautiful princess.

_Yeah_.

Rapunzel sighed heavily, relief softening her features as she withdrew her hand from his to clap. "And he can sing and dance. Don't let him tell you otherwise."


	2. I Sold My Heart to the Junkman

2. I Sold My Heart to the Junkman

"(Sold my heart) I sold my heart to the junkman. (I sold my heart) I sold my heart to the junkman. I can never fall in love again."—_I Sold My Heart to the Junkman_ by The Blue-belles.

A weight settled on Eugene's chest, and despite his current state of painful post-inebriation of which he was suddenly and keenly aware, his reflexes—honed by years of sordid company and open air sleeping—served him well. He lurched, nearly throwing the unknown assailant off before gripping them by the wrists.

The giggle that followed made him slump back into his pillow. He did not need the curtain drawn back to know who perched atop him.

"Morning, Eugene."

In fact, he didn't want the curtain opened. Five days of celebration were beginning to wear on even him—Flynn Rider. Particularly since Flynn rarely arose before noon. Eugene Fitzherbert seemingly was not so lucky. "Morning, Blondie. Now go back to bed," he grunted, as he released her wrists from his grip and threw an arm over his eyes.

She leaned forward, balancing with her hands on his shoulders. "Eu-gene," she whispered close enough to his ear that he could feel her breath disturbing his hair. "Let's go exploring."

"Later," he mumbled, turning his head into the pillow.

Rapunzel sat back upright, wriggling atop him. "But I've already eaten breakfast and brushed my hair and drawn two pictures and…"

"Shh…" he shushed her, reaching up to press his fingers to her mouth. "Sleeping," he murmured.

If she would only be quiet, he'd let her lay down here next to him. She smelled pleasant. Like lavender.

She tried to mumble something against his fingers and by now he was enough awake to consider the Implications of her being here. "You should probably get off me," he advised her, letting his hand slip and cracking one eye long enough to see her frown.

"Why? Am I heavy?" she asked, fingering her shortened locks subconsciously.

No doubt she felt a great deal lighter—physically as well as metaphorically without those locks to drag around even though he kept waiting for her to freak out about the loss of her hair, her tower, or the woman she had thought was her mother. But it wasn't her inconsequential weight atop him that disturbed him. Grasping her by the waist, he lifted and dumped her unceremoniously by his side.

She didn't seem to care, as she moved alongside him, tucking her hands beneath her cheek on the pillow they now shared. "How much longer are you going to sleep?" she stage whispered completely undeterred.

Groaning, he scrubbed his face with his hand. "Not long enough, it would seem," he said, looking out of the corner of his eye at her.

"You're awake, aren't you?" she asked, poking his bicep.

"Barely." He cleared his throat. "You wanna be a dear and uh, get me a glass of water?" His mouth tasted like he'd been licking the floor of a stable. The wine from the royal banquet hadn't done this surely. He must have gotten his hands on something less refined.

"Here," she said, scooping Pascal from her shoulder, where he had failed to spot him not so much due to clever coloring as Eugene's own bleary eyed gaze.

"Aw, not the dang frog," he groaned as Rapunzel deposited the creature atop his head, but she ignored his complaints about her pet as usual. He wondered whether they would ever truly be alone or whether the frog was now in the paid employ of the King and Queen as a covert chaperone.

Rapunzel slipped from the bed and moved to the basin that rested upon the dresser. After plucking Pascal from his head and setting him atop the bedside table, he watched her in the dim light, which peeked through the seams in the heavy, blue velvet curtains. She moved to assist him most cheerfully, evidently not feeling as if her head was in a vice.

_What did we do last night?_ They'd been up late, he was certain, but Eugene could not quite recall what they were up to the previous night. "Hey, Blondie," he called to her casually.

"Yes?" she replied as she spun around, her violet skirts whirling around her while miraculously not spilling the water she had poured for him before she crawled atop the bed once more.

He reached for the glass and pushed himself up in the sheets. As he swallowed one grateful slug of water after another, he peered down his nose at his bare chest. Glass drained, he handed it back to her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand while wishing for a chance to take a peek under these sheets.

"Yes, Eugene?" she pressed.

He watched her, transfixed for a moment by her existence—here with him inside the palace. Depending on how he felt from one moment to the next, he defined himself as an orphan or a thief, and in spite of all that he had the Lost Princess wrinkling her nose at him and kneeling in his mussed sheets first thing in the morning.

Gesturing towards her nonchalantly, he smiled slowly. "You and I didn't…we didn't…" he stopped to rub his chin. "Did we?"

"You don't remember _any_ of it?" she asked incredulously, as she clutched the glass to her chest.

"'fraid not."

"We found a locked garden. A _secret_ garden, Eugene! You said you'd give me a boost over the wall. You said you could break in _anywhere_, and I just knew you could," she hurriedly recounted in evident excitement, "but then your legs got all wobbly and you couldn't manage it," she finished, her shoulders slouching as she frowned.

"And that's it?"

Rapunzel tilted her head to the side. "Well, that's not all of it. We did a lot of wonderful things before that. You have a terrible memory, Eugene. Just the worst."

She looked apologetic about her pronouncement, but her words didn't sting. As he looked to the ceiling and blew air through the hair that hung into his eyes, all he felt was immense relief. "Good. Yeah, that's good." He had no wish for guards to burst into his room looking for a Lost Princess who had never returned to her bedchamber last night.

"You're up, so can we go back to the garden right now? I know just where it is."

It wasn't the first time that Eugene suspected that Rapunzel imagined that if she didn't hurry to experience everything, it would up and disappear on her. "You know, Princess, it'll still be there…" he began.

One of her hands closed upon his forearm. Head tilted down and looking hopefully at him through her lashes, she tugged slightly, as if to pull him from the bed after her.

She had a whole palace worth of people she could ask to go exploring, and yet she was here crawling all over him, choosing him.

He reached up and tucked a wayward strand of her newly brunette hair behind her ear.

_So_, he would get up a little earlier than he had planned in order to explore with her. He wouldn't mention that all they probably need do was ask for the key to the garden if she really wanted to see what was inside. Breaking in would be more impressive. A demonstration of his considerable skills had regrettably not been much called upon as of late.

When he remained silent, she began to chew her bottom lip, as she glanced towards his legs stretched somewhat akimbo under the sheets. "Your legs aren't still wobbly, are they?" she asked warily.

"Are you kidding? I'll be fine. I can handle anything," he said with a wink that caused him no small amount of pain. He needed to find out what he'd drank last night and _never drink it again_.

"Good, because you're heavy," she confessed, as she slumped into the headboard with some imaginary weight upon her. "I shouldered you half the way from the garden and then Hilda found us in the hallway, when you decided to hug the pillar, and she shouldered you the rest of the way."

_Hug the pillar?_ It was a good thing Rapunzel was a lot stronger than she looked, because he didn't want to begin to work out how much more of him there was than her. He rubbed his temples, trying to soothe the ache and remember even one moment after the dancing had started, but he was a blank. That was a little terrifying.

He'd blacked out before, but… "What exactly did I say last night?" _Please nothing stupid, please…_ He had been thinking any number of stupid things since they had left her tower together with her hand tucked inside his, but he was not looking to actually say any of them.

Flynn had a way with women, but he suspected Eugene was hopeless with them. Eugene might even have said some very incriminating things last night. Things Blondie would no doubt remember and repeat at the most inopportune times. She had already blithely shared some choice information with her newly reclaimed parents, ignorant to the fact that they might not be entirely Charmed by it.

"Eugene broke the vase in the throne room into a thousand pretty little pieces just perfect for a mosaic."

"Eugene fell asleep during Father's speech, because he was so very sleepy from being up all night."

"Eugene can climb into my _new_ window too."

Apparently this is what came of not having someone around hissing—_tattle tale_—when you were a kid. Nothing prevented her from saying whatever came into her head. Shrugging off these confessions was already becoming habitual for him.

Rapunzel rearranged herself on the bed, the glass rolling away discarded as she brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around herself. He could just see her toes peeking out of her skirts, as she wiggled them. "I couldn't understand half of what you were saying to me, because your tongue was all thick and funny, but Pascal and I thought you seemed very earnest. That's when Hilda told me I'd sold my heart to the junkman. What do you suppose she meant by that?"

Eugene worked his jaw for a moment. "It means…" _Who is Hilda?_ Rapunzel had seemingly learned the names of the entire palace staff in no more than three days, and they'd all eventually have an opinion about him. Hilda was no doubt just one of many who already considered him to be trash. "It means Hilda doesn't much like me." It meant that this Hilda person expected him to treat Rapunzel badly. To break her heart.

"Oh," Rapunzel laughed, sounding strangely relieved.

"Hey!" he objected. He was too cool, above it all, and utterly detached to care about what people thought. _Listen, babe: if the Hildas of this world didn't dislike me, I'd be doing it all wrong_. The whole kingdom could take a long walk off a short pier for all he cared. Nevertheless, shouldn't his Blondie have taken umbrage at this grave offense?

_My Blondie_. _Where the heck did that come from?_

Springing forward, she threw her arms around his neck, nuzzling into his collarbone, as she cooed, "Oh, Eugene, lots of people don't like you."

Rolling his eyes, he wrapped an arm around her back, bringing her more tightly against him for just a moment and then he would send her away, so he could drag himself out of this bed and prepare for Adventure Blondie-style. It tended to be a great deal more wholesome than the kind of Adventure to which he had previously been accustomed. And strangely more appealing.

Everything was better with her. That was strangely unnerving too.

"I hope that's not what you told Hilda." He would have to tell Hilda to mind her own damn business.

"No, I told her I hadn't sold you anything."

"No?" he asked, as she pulled back from him, her hands still lingering on his chest.

"No," she said with a shy grin, "thieves don't _buy_ anything. You stole it."


	3. Tell Him

3. Tell Him

"Tell him that you're never gonna leave him. Tell him that you're always gonna love him. Tell him, tell him, tell him, tell him right now."—_Tell Him_ by The Exciters.

When Rapunzel stomped into the room, her hands fisted at her sides and brows furrowed, Eugene's head snapped up from his book. It was no _Flynnigan Rider_: the Royal Library dealt more in weighty tomes than dashing and daring entertainment, but reading was one way to wile the hours away while Rapunzel was busy with official duties that did not require his presence. The view only was diverting for just so long after all, and he'd been used to it for months, so acceptable hobbies had to be acquired. Reading, it turned out, was one of the things he could do fairly contentedly.

"Hey, Blondie," he ventured, wondering if her apparent mood was of the lasting kind.

She didn't bother with pleasantries. "I'm not going to leave you," she announced, as she kicked off her satin slippers, crawled atop his lap, and balanced herself on the arm of the large chair he'd been sitting in for the past hour.

This was just the sort of familiarity between them that the King and Queen had clearly been both loath to correct in their daughter and understandably anxious about. Rapunzel seemed oblivious to their discomfort, but Eugene was not. Although, not enough to speak to her about it himself, for he was also reluctant to stop her. Certainly for a different reason—the very reason that no doubt kept his regal hosts up at night.

He clapped his book shut with a dull thud and tossed it onto the nearest table. Eye level with her thanks to her narrow perch, he turned to address her without his usual height advantage, "Who said anything about leaving?" He said it in his _don't sweat it, babe_ tone of voice, but after six months he was beginning to wonder if he was on the verge of wearing out his welcome here at the palace.

The King and Queen did not act as if they minded him. He even felt rather cozy with them, but that wasn't a feeling he trusted. He was not ignorant to the fact that a royal pardon did not suddenly make him a suitable or desirable companion for the Princess. He had begun to prep himself for the moment they would request his exit.

"Father wants me to come with him on the Royal Progress, but I won't leave you," she said firmly. "Ever." Her mouth was set with stubborn resolve. The kind of resolve she sometimes aimed at him. Flynn would have had more success ignoring that fearsome pout, but Eugene always folded. He was glad some other sorry sap was its victim this time.

He reached up, shucking her under her chin. "I'm going to be straight with you, sweetheart: it's going to be tough. I'm a charming guy, and you were bound to get attached, but I think you'll survive a couple of weeks without me."

She huffed, toeing his thigh in irritation.

He grabbed her foot, so that her unintended game of footsies didn't get too carried away. Or rather, that _he_ didn't.

If he stopped to explain that what she was doing was called footsies and it was a bad idea out in the open like this with the door standing wide open, he would end up being questioned for a quarter of an hour on the intricacies of the new game. Rapunzel was nothing if not thorough. So, he just held tight.

"I'm not worried about me."

"You're not?" he asked with feigned innocence. "Who are you worried about?"

"You, Eugene."

He smiled slowly, tracing his finger along the arch of her foot. "'fraid I'll get into trouble without you here?"

Rapunzel jerked at his ghosting touch and gave him her _don't you do it_ glare. Her mother had told her that tickling in public was frowned upon, and Rapunzel took that rule exceptionally seriously. Perhaps it was due to it being one of the few that had been imposed on her and only after a particularly violent tickling episode in the main hall, which had ended in a torn hem and a sizable ruckus caused by the overly protective guards, who didn't think Flynn Rider should be allowed to Manhandle the Princess. Granted, it hadn't been one of his best ideas, but in actuality of fact, it had been her fault. If she didn't squeal so, or flail, or say his name all breathily while he ran his fingers over her side, he wouldn't be so sorely tempted.

She gave her foot a little kick, freeing it from his grasp.

"I know you wouldn't do anything bad," she said in that tone that made him almost believe himself capable of nothing but goodness.

What Rapunzel didn't know was that Flynn had stolen something only yesterday. Just a trinket really. Something small and sparkly, something he thought he'd maybe give to the Princess if it actually had been his to give. Just to see if he still could. He was going to put it back anyway. Putting it back might prove to be even more of a rush. And the rush, well, he liked the rush. He really, really liked the rush. Almost as much as he liked the feeling of Rapunzel's soft lips pressed to his own.

He scoffed, "Bad? No, of course not. I'll even watch the place while you're gone. Free of charge. Feed the frog, water the plants."

"I'm not leaving either of you," she said doggedly.

He and the frog ranked about equal as best he could figure. But Eugene had to admit: the little guy had his uses. Frightening boring dinner guests by popping out of unexpected places was his favorite thus far.

He was smiling to himself, recollecting that overly opinionated lord's eyes as Pascal crawled out of His Eminence's cup, when he realized that tears were beginning to pool and glisten in the corners of Rapunzel's eyes. "Hey," he frowned, slipping his arm around her waist.

"I'm _never_ going to leave you," she whispered forcefully, as she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hands.

"Are you freaking out?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry, Eugene," she sniffed.

"It's all right," he murmured, rubbing circles on the small of her back. It was understandable if she felt a little uneasy about leaving him behind. He could get that.

"I know all about your abandonment issues," she confessed, as if it was a most dreadful secret.

"What's this?" he asked, drawing back a little, as his hand still lingered in the small of her back.

"It's okay: I know all about it. Mother told me how…orphans have abandonment issues, and I _won't_ leave you."

"Hold on, hold on," he said, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. "I do _not_ have abandonment issues." _Grown men don't have emotional issues of any kind_. His only issue was having a Princess for a girlfriend.

"But you're an orphan," she insisted. "Right?"

"Yeah, but…"

She leaned forward, face knit with concern. "That's why you sometimes Act Out."

For a moment he could do nothing but let his mouth hang open dumbly, as her nose almost touched his. "Act out?" he finally parroted back. He thought he'd been on his best behavior—generally.

"Be a smart Alex," she elaborated with a little nod.

"Smart aleck," he began to correct her before groaning. "That's just me, babe. That doesn't mean anything."

"But you do it when people are nice to you. Mother says it's a defensive measure," she said, reaching up to smooth his hair. He tossed his head a little, undoing her efforts. It didn't stop her from looking sympathetically at him. "We all know, and it's okay, Eugene," she said, her eyes round and sincere.

_How has this gotten so damn turned around?_ He wasn't the one with a 'mother' who'd abducted, imprisoned, and abused him. Made the orphanage sound like a real fairytale by comparison. "Aren't you pretty much in the same boat there, Blondie? You know what they say about people and glass houses."

She sat back up, biting her lower lip in thought. "Um, I don't know. That they're very rare? I've never even seen a glass house."

"Maybe you'll see one on the Progress," Eugene muttered.

_Look_, he liked the Queen, he really did. She was kind and soft spoken and gentle. She was good to Rapunzel—just the kind of mother she deserved to have. But he did not like the idea of the Queen talking with his girl about his so-called Abandonment Issues, filling her head with Notions about his having some soft, gooey center that feared being kicked to the curb. Because he absolutely didn't remotely… _Wait a minute_.

"I'll only see the glass houses if you can come with me," Rapunzel vowed. "We'll see them _together_ or we won't see them at all."

He pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting off what already felt like a headache forming behind his eyes. She meant well, he knew, and she seemed really unnerved by the thought of his potential unhappiness in her absence. No one had ever really cared about his happiness before. And he would be pretty bummed with her gone for several weeks. He'd end up climbing the walls, no doubt. Without her waiting up high in the window once he got to the top, what was the point?

He sighed, letting his hand fall back into his lap. "Listen, you don't need to worry about me. I won't burn the place down, I won't hair off. I'll be right here when you get back." Because, if he was honest with himself, he wasn't going to ever really leave her either, and if anyone felt differently, he was going to have something to say about it. Loudly. There would be a lot of loud, unpleasant, manly yelling.

"But, shouldn't we work on your abandonment issues?" she asked, clasping her hands under her chin.

"You can work on me anytime you want, Princess," he said _sotte voce_, falling into Flynn for just a moment, so he could recover some of his masculine pride, which had to be lurking around here somewhere.

A small cough announced the Queen's entrance into the library. She looked someplace in the vicinity of Eugene's boots instead of the pair of them entangled on the chair.

He nudged her with his elbow. "Blondie, jump down. You're crowding me."

Rapunzel climbed down from the chair, helped by Eugene's steadying hand before tripping over to the Queen. "Hello, Mother," she said with modulated delight.

The Queen wrapped her arms around Rapunzel and kissed the crown of her head. "Is everything all right, my dear?" she asked, as the Princess looked up at her. "I heard there was a kerfuffle."

"Gesundheit," Eugene said automatically. _Shoot, was that acting out?_

The Queen smiled over her daughter's shorn locks, giving him the little half smile that she often bestowed on him. She smiled even more with her eyes. _Yeah_, she wasn't a bad mother. He wouldn't have minded a mother like her.

"Father said Eugene couldn't come on the Royal Progress, and I won't go without him, and we want to see the glass houses together," Rapunzel said in a rush.

The Queen raised her brows, baffled by at least part of Rapunzel's outburst.

"Say he can come, please?"

"The people need to see their princess, and while your father wants you to be happy, my dear, Eugene has to stay home for now, because he doesn't have an official role yet."

'Home' and 'for now' and 'yet—the words in that pronouncement unmistakably promised a little more than their temporary toleration of him, making something catch in his throat, but Eugene inspected his nails as if he wasn't hearing a word of what passed between them.

"Yes he does. He discovered me, and then he was my guide, and then we saved each other, and now we discover things together and he holds my hand when I'm scared. He has lots of roles," Rapunzel protested. "I _love_ him."

His eyes darted up and found the Queen's. Her smile was more than a half.

"Well then, I think we'll need to speak with your father," the Queen said, "because that makes Mr. Fitzherbert rather indispensable. Wouldn't you say so, Eugene?"

No one had ever loved him before.

This might be the one thing in his life he couldn't afford to mess up.

He swallowed, his Adam's apple working overtime. "Yeah, I'd say so."

Rapunzel twisted in her mother's arms, beaming back at him, justifiably assured in her ability to win the day with all of them when she put her mind to it.

Dying for her had been easy. Being the man she deserved would be a whole lot harder.


	4. Be My Baby

4. Be My Baby

"I'll make you happy, baby, just wait and see. For every kiss you give me, I'll give you three."—_Be My Baby_ by The Ronettes.

Rapunzel skipped in a circle around him, her fingertips trailing over his arm, his chest, his arm, and his back in turn as she hummed the latest song that had been taught to her by her singing teacher. She'd been singing it for two days straight. Falling asleep the previous night had been unpleasantly frustrated by the lyrics, which had been firmly planted there due to her constant singing, rushing through his mind, but it wasn't the first time Rapunzel had caused him to lie awake staring at the ceiling. This time the cause was just a good deal less complicated.

Eugene stood, arms crossed beneath the spreading apple tree, waiting for this stage of glee to peter out, so they could begin picking apples in earnest. This wasn't so bad anyway, even if he was serving as a resting spot for the frog, which was curled on his shoulder in a shade of blue that matched his vest. _Yeah_, frog or not, it wasn't bad at all. Sure, he made a good show of looking bored, but as far as he was concerned, she could keep this up for hours, slipping around him and biting her lip every time she passed in front of him.

"Come on, Eugene," she pleaded, stopping at his side for a moment to rest her head on his shoulder and stroke his arm.

This little flirtation was some strange attempt to coax him to climb into the tree with her—an activity she was certain would be vastly entertaining—and while it wasn't working, he could find no fault with her persuasive techniques.

The Princess was a plotter. She didn't plot heists, but she plotted adventures. She had been plotting picking the last of the season's apples from the orchard since this morning. She'd talked of nothing else. When Eugene had heard the plan to scale the trees, he had tried to convince her that he could reach the apples from the ground and she didn't need to climb in order to get them down, but Rapunzel insisted that the good apples were all gone from the lower branches and Maximus only deserved the best.

Then he'd suggested getting a ladder from one of the gardeners, but she'd frowned at that notion as if he'd just suggested they play the Quiet Game—a game he'd once proposed when an agonizing hangover had him begging for silence. She had quickly not only decided it was the Worst Game Ever, but that he also was something of a traitor to recommend such a terrible activity. Hair was for hoisting and frying pans for fighting in Rapunzel's world. Ladders were for the unimaginative, the Quiet Game for mutes.

He hadn't been the only one to try to divert the plot: Hilda, who in the process of the discussion had suddenly become an ally, had tried to convince her that princesses in dresses shouldn't be up trees where they could break their necks. Suggesting the Princess couldn't do something was tantamount to a dare, however. She didn't have her hair anymore, but she could still take on the world. With a frog and a thief. That was him: sidekick to the Princess of Corona.

"Those old tree limbs wouldn't hold me, babe. See? Totally solid," he demonstrated his considerable heft, making a muscle for her that was only partially obscured by his rolled up shirtsleeve.

She looked wholly unimpressed. Rapunzel was weird like that. Totally unruffled by smolders or muscles.

But she liked when he fed the stray cat that hung around his window table scraps, and when he awkwardly mended the hole in his favorite vest. She cooed over those things like he'd slain a dragon. _Well_, she liked his nose. _Yeah, it's a good nose_. Not everyone could properly appreciate a fine nose like this, but his Blondie did.

He needed her in one piece, so she could softly bump his nose with hers like she sometimes did after she kissed him. So she could hum these songs and twirl around him. That's why she wasn't going to get him up in the damn tree no matter how much she batted her eyelashes at him. No, he had to stay here on the ground to catch her, because when Hilda's warning about princesses in trees came back to him, his palms began to sweat.

He reached up and twisted a shiny, perfectly respectably red apple, freeing it from its branch. He eyed it up to be sure: more than adequate for a horse, more than adequate for him too. He used to steal stuff to eat that didn't appear to be half this edible. He rubbed it quickly on his shirt, took a monstrous bite, and then held it out to Rapunzel. He attempted to level her with a look that said—_See? I can reach the good apples_—even though he knew that cause was lost.

"Hungry?" he suggested, as she took it from him and turned it slowly in her hand.

The juice of the already bitten apple trailed down the side of her hand.

It suddenly occurred to him that this was just as terrible idea as her climbing trees. Maybe worse. If she licked that juice off the length of her arm, he was going to have to turn and stride from this orchard as if his life depended on it. There was only so much a man could be expected to take.

Potential danger was averted, however, when she took one inelegantly large bite and then tossed the apple off to the side. "Not particularly," she shrugged, apple puffing out one cheek.

Okay, it was a little overripe, but he wasn't going to admit that.

She sighed, coming to stand in front of him and wrapping her hands around his forearms. She leaned back creating an oblique angle between them. "But promise me one thing."

He stared down his nose at her, counterbalancing her weight without really trying. "What?" He knew better than to promise things to the Princess without getting pertinent details first. That was how he'd ended up pasting up placards for Hook Hand's latest piano recital.

"Let's take a _long_ time collecting apples, okay? A really long time."

"Sure, whatever."

Victory lit her face.

"What exactly are you trying to skip?" he said, jerking his head back towards the castle.

Rapunzel liked to play hooky, and she liked to play hooky with him, which was a decidedly good thing. The only bad part was when he got blamed for it, and he _always_ got blamed for it. He shot Pascal a look. Why couldn't the frog take the blame every once in a while? Eugene had wide shoulders, but _come on_. Pascal smirked back at him.

"The dancing master is coming today," she said, wrinkling her nose.

"So, what's wrong with that?"

She paused, as if weighing her answer. "Singing lessons are better than dancing lessons."

"You make a good show of liking to dance then," he said flatly. "You dance more than you walk."

"I do like dancing!" she said, shifting her balance suddenly onto the balls of her toes so that she rose up before him with her fingers still tight around his forearms.

Her upturned face hovered just below his for a moment, and then she pressed a quick kiss to his chin that tickled the hairs of his goatee. She would have rocked back on her heels away from him, but he unfolded his arms and caught her about the waist, tugging her to his chest.

"You missed." Inclining his head, he pressed his lips to hers. They tasted like apple.

"No I didn't," she smiled, as his arm relaxed, allowing her to rest back flat footed on the ground.

He cleared his throat. "You gonna tell me what's wrong with the dancing master?" he asked, as he dragged his hand through his hair, a little flustered by the kiss. Before Rapunzel, kisses hadn't left him this off balance since he had been a teenager.

"I don't like the way the dancing master makes me dance. This foot then that foot. Turn and turn. I want to go where the music leads me," she said, waving her arms for emphasis.

"And that doesn't suit him, huh?" _Jerk_. She was so cute when she flitted around however she damn well pleased.

"No. He gets frustrated with me. I can tell."

_Prig_. "Tell him to stuff it."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Eu-gene. That's not nice."

He shrugged. He didn't want anyone making his girl unhappy. "You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet."

Rapunzel rolled her eyes. "I know perfectly well how to make an omelet. It's the dancing lessons that give me trouble." The triumph that had brightened her features when she'd decided to skip her lesson began to melt away. "But, I'll hurt his feelings if I don't show up."

"I'm sure he'll get over it." Not like he'd know: Rapunzel had never ditched him. He grinned to himself, feeling smug at the thought.

"Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you took dancing lessons with me."

She was so sneaky. She tried to slip that in while he was standing here feeling self-satisfied. "Oh, no," he said, extending a hand to stop the notion before it had time to take root. "No, I don't dance."

"Yes you do. You're a very good dancer."

He leaned a hand against the tree's trunk, the other hand cavalierly at his hip. He imagined he looked as cool as a cucumber. Like the kind of guy who most definitely did not take dancing lessons. Like _Flynn Rider_. Standing here like this, she couldn't help but see how dangerous and dashing he was, and she'd forget about this stupid idea of hers.

She'd forget how stupid he'd looked in the Snuggly Duckling.

This was serious business, so for good measure, he cocked one brow at her, certain this impressively suave display would do the trick.

Rapunzel tilted her head, bunched her skirts in her hands, and swayed slightly, her one toe tracing an invisible pattern in the grass. "I'll do anything you want," she wheedled.

"No you won't." Because that would be an even worse idea than dancing lessons.

"I'll make you happy."

"Blondie, you already make me happy."

She kept up that slow twisting, turning to the side and biting her lower lip in careful consideration, as she no doubt thought of new things with which to tempt him.

Even Eugene could recognize that the pair of them must look ridiculous, posturing like this, but he was not going to blink first. He had years of practice at this sort of thing—he was pro. Rapunzel was bound to deliver weak sauce by comparison.

"I'll kiss you every morning and twice in the evening."

"That many times, hmm?" he said in evident disinterest, drumming his fingers on the bark of the tree. Because offers of kisses wouldn't work on him.

The flirty little look she threw him over her shoulder made his stomach tighten, as if she knew what she was about. But she couldn't possibly. _Right?_

It occurred to him that if she ever figured out the full extent of her feminine wiles, he'd be in real trouble. He'd be modeling dress patterns for her like her poor sucker of a frog. He spared Pascal a sympathetic shrug, because that was Never going to happen: lace was not his thing.

"That's three kisses a day, Eugene."

His hand slipped and he nearly upset the frog from his perch, as he windmilled his arms so as to reverse his fall. He straightened back up. She was staring at him as if too much beer had been imbibed.

That wasn't his excuse, however. Those three little promised kisses whispered all soft and low had triggered a sensory memory that was a little startling.

Recovering, he casually brushed invisible dirt off the shoulder not being used as a frog stand, reminding himself, _cool as a cucumber_. He turned back to address her, "Using those impressive mathematics skills, I see, but you neglect the fact that you sometimes kiss me more than that in a day already." Two today. The first outside her bedchamber behind a sizable potted plant. Not that he was counting. "And why would I barter, when I could just steal one?" he smirked.

Rapunzel dropped her skirts, seemingly weary of his refusals to comply with her plotting today. Her tone was less winsome and more frustrated when she requested, "Please? And then we can dance together at balls."

He laughed. Now she was being ridiculous. "Listen, babe, the only way I'd be allowed to dance with you at a ball is if I was the Prince Consort himself. Got it?"

She nodded enthusiastically. "The Prince Consort himself: yes, I got it."

That seemed to satisfy her.

She looked up into the tree's branches and then back at Eugene, returning her focus to the plot at hand—apples for Maximus. He imagined she was contemplating climbing him like a post, and if he didn't make some move to help her, it would soon be a flurry of Princess arms and legs in his face. Experience had taught him that if he stood very still she would climb right up and very nearly strangle him. Better to bend the knee and hold out a hand, and offer her assistance so that he could hoist her into the branches.

And in the end, he only got a kick to the ear in the process.

…

"I want to thank you," the King said with his usual good-natured joviality.

It wasn't like the King to be sarcastic, so Eugene smiled back at him, curious as to what he'd done to earn the man's gratitude.

"You were right about Rapunzel's skill with numbers."

"Aw, yeah. She's good at everything," Eugene shrugged off the praise. You only had to look in her journal or at her sketch pads to see her ample talents with mathematics and astronomy and art: he couldn't really take credit for discovering it.

"Yes, she is," the King said, full of fatherly pride, "but you were thoughtful enough to bring it to our attention that her present set of lessons were not quite as stimulating as she would have liked."

"She doesn't like to say anything that might hurt someone's feelings." Eugene paused, a smirk quirking the corners of his mouth. "I don't have that problem."

"Very good, my boy. Someone has to take a hard line from time to time or the kingdom would suffer for it."

Eugene shifted in his chair. Maybe the King called everyone under thirty 'my boy,' but he didn't know what his sticking up for Rapunzel had to do with the wellbeing of Corona.

"But I also hear you're going to be taking some new lessons as well."

Eugene shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I've got a pretty busy schedule. Sleeping, eating, reading, shooting the breeze…my days are packed solid."

"It was my understanding, Mister Fitzherbert that you were looking for a promotion," the King began, reaching out a hand towards Eugene, and for one startling moment he thought the King was going to cuff him like he'd sometimes been hit as a kid before he'd been old enough to hit back.

A promotion from what to what? Pardoned thief to Most Wanted? Perhaps as a belated punishment for being found in the duck pond several hours after midnight engaged in an impromptu swimming lesson? _Even princesses need to know how to swim_. And although, the drag from her dress had made the lesson more about splashing and squirming than actual swimming, he wasn't stupid—he'd insisted it stay on. Not that the guards had seemed to care much about that noble detail.

But when the King's hand came down a half second later, it didn't hit him, it clapped him on the back, and he boomed, "A promotion that requires a dancing master."

_Dancing?_ Eugene groaned, "Your majesty, the Princess…" _Is like a dog with a bone_.

The King supplied the rest for him: "Needs a Prince Consort who can dance with her at balls, or so my daughter informs me."

Eugene sputtered. _Prince Consort?_ He choked. _A promotion?_ He doubled over, grabbing his knees just as the King's heavy hand began to pound him uselessly on the back. He could vaguely hear inquires into his condition, but he couldn't say whether he was going to be all right. He only knew one thing for sure.

The Princess was a plotter. She didn't plot heists, but she was plotting his future.


	5. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

5. Will You Love Me Tomorrow

"Tonight with words unspoken you say that I'm the only one, but will my heart be broken, when the night meets the morning sun?"—_Will You Love Me Tomorrow_ by The Shirelles.

* * *

><p>"Mr. Fitzherbert?" the Queen's soft voice called to him.<p>

Eugene stood upright, having been lounging against the wall, arms crossed over his chest as he'd watched the merriment before him and served as a perch for Pascal.

"Mr. Fitzherbert," she continued, as he swung his head to the side to address her. "Have you seen Rapunzel?"

Had he seen her? He'd been watching her all night. She looked beautiful. If she hadn't looked like she was having so much fun, he would have paid someone to shout 'fire' so everyone would clear out and he could get her alone.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Recently?" the Queen pressed, her brows raised.

He glanced down at the nearly drained mug on the table beside him. It had been one beer ago, maybe two since he'd seen her. "Uh, actually, no," he said, his arms coming unfolded. "Not for a little while."

"The King is asking after her," the Queen said, surveying the room. "It's not like her to disappear during a celebration…alone."

The implication was as clear as day. Disappear with Eugene, yes. Alone, no.

They'd sneaked away from a ball not so long ago, because while Eugene had taken more dancing lessons than he cared to admit to, he was still not a Prince Consort. There was no dancing with his girl with the eyes of the world upon them. So, Eugene had grown bored, Rapunzel restless. The two of them had slipped out of a side door and into the kitchen to make cupcakes—the Princess' idea. Smearing icing on each other had been Eugene's—_a genius idea, really_. Rapunzel had looked particularly edible with a smudge of pink frosting across her freckled nose. He would have investigated that supposition, but an irate cook had descended upon them like a force of nature, putting an end to cupcake making and Princess tasting alike.

"But she didn't happen to tell you where she was going?" the Queen asked, when he stood there silently fingering the rim of the mug where it rested, lost in reverie. "You didn't _see_ her leave?"

"Must have missed it while I was busy holding up this wall."

"And you make a very handsome wallflower," the Queen said with as much of a smirk as she was ever likely to attempt. "Might you be persuaded to give it up for a different task?"

Eugene chuckled. "I might be persuaded. You want me to go look for her?"

"It would probably cause less of a commotion than setting the guards out after her. Besides, I thought you might know her secret hiding places."

Because they were his as well.

Eugene nodded. "Right. I'll just need you to watch the frog for me. Make sure he doesn't end up anywhere he's not supposed to be. Can't have them both go missing," he said, picking Pascal off his shoulder and placing him in the Queen's outstretched hands.

It only took a moment to drain the rest of his beer before going to look for the Misplaced Princess.

Rapunzel's disappearance was strange, he conceded, as he began to wander up and down halls, peeking around doors and under tables. Rapunzel loved a party. She loved her people. She was not the type to slink off by herself while everyone else was dancing and drinking and being gay. Something had to have drawn her away.

He found her in the Observatory, but she wasn't looking at the stars. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, gaze fixed on her upturned palms resting in the hammock of her golden skirts.

"They're looking for you, Blondie," he said, propped for a second against the doorway before pushing off, his boots echoing on the stone floor as he came to crouch beside her.

He was about to tease her about her strange solitary habits, when he heard her sniff. He brushed a strand of hair away from her face, so that he might see her better, but what he uncovered was a trail of tears.

His chest tightened. Someone had made her cry. Someone had hurt Rapunzel, who would never knowingly hurt anyone, ever. Sympathy, anger, disorder pulsed through his veins. His first inclination was to storm out of this observatory to find the culprit, lift them off their feet, knock them up against a wall, and threaten them. He'd make them cry.

First inclinations might be personally satisfying, but they were not always the most helpful, he'd learned. Rapunzel needed him here, not off causing an uproar. Therefore, he sat down beside her, putting aside personal satisfaction and wrapping a hand around her waist to drag her closer to him. Their hips bumped as she turned her face in toward his shoulder.

"Babe," he said, tilting her chin up. He smoothed away a rolling tear with his thumb.

Her glittering green eyes looked up at him through dark, wet lashes. "It's very hard to know who I can trust," she confessed.

"What happened?"

She wiped hastily at her eyes with the diaphanous sleeves of her gown. "I heard something that wasn't meant for my ears." She looked past him, sniffing once more. "Lady Eva doesn't like me as much as I thought. I told her things. Private things, and now I wish I had guarded my tongue with her."

_Well, 'Lady Eva' eliminates the possibility of a good shaking_.

He pulled her into his chest, running his hand through her hair.

Rapunzel rarely guarded her tongue. It was a charming trait, her faith in people, her open heart. He hated to see that undermined by some petty woman. _What a witch_.

"I'm sorry. I know you liked her." Lady Eva was one of the first young women with whom Rapunzel had developed a friendship.

"Maybe I'm wrong about a lot of people," she mumbled into his green wool vest.

"Naw, she's just one bad apple."

"One bad apple can spoil the bunch," she said, repeating back a truism that was often used in regards to Maximus' sizable apple stores.

"There's a whole room of good people down there, missing their Princess. You're wasting the pretty up here, crying over Lady Eva, getting all snotty," he insisted, digging in his pocket for a handkerchief, but he didn't seem to have one. _A Prince Consort would have a dang handkerchief for the Princess to weep into_. All he had was a shoulder.

She didn't respond to his uneven compliment, but her fingers found the collar of his shirt and worked their way underneath to his skin.

"Whatever she said, she's just jealous," he continued. "That you're the princess, that you live in this incredible palace, that you have the love of the King and Queen, and that you have a devastatingly handsome boyfriend."

Rapunzel pushed on his chest and sat upright. "Eu-gene," she protested with a shake of her head.

"Okay, maybe just jealous of me then," he grinned.

"Lady Eva is engaged to be married." She glanced down at her hands again, her unadorned fingers.

"Ah. Not jealous of me then." But perhaps made bold due to her new circumstances, perhaps feeling a bit superior to Rapunzel for once. He could almost guess at the content of Lady Eva's words. "Listen, that's the thing about people, they gossip and say things… sometimes they don't even mean half of what they say." He drew a finger down the nape of her neck to the neckline of her gown, ruffling the lace that adorned it. "You don't have to take her words to heart."

"I shouldn't listen to whispers," she said softly, sounding as if she was trying to convince herself of that fact. She pulled her knees up to her chest beneath her skirts.

His hand skated down to the small of her back, where she was so narrow, where his hand felt it belonged, where he'd wanted to place it all night, as he'd watched her move about the room with a smile for everyone she met. Instead, he'd had to imagine that he was there at her side while he buttressed a wall and pretended not to talk to the frog.

Her shoulders hunched up around her ears and his hand paused in its trail.

"I know who I can trust. I know what you did for me, Eugene. That proves it."

She sounded, however, anything but certain.

He scrubbed his face with his hand. "You know you can trust me and you can trust the King and Queen," he finally managed. He had promised himself some time ago that he would never do anything to make her regret placing her faith in a thief, and the King and Queen were the best people he'd ever met outside of their amazing daughter.

"I know," she whispered, her eyes darting to his. "That's why it's stupid of me, but I've been wrong before. I was wrong about…Gothel."

"That wasn't your fault," he said quickly. They rarely spoke about Gothel and as far as he knew she never mentioned the woman to anyone but him, because Rapunzel couldn't stand the look in her parents' eyes when she referred to her. She needed to talk about it sometimes though.

Sometimes her hands trembled when the subject did come up. He looked down at the tightly balled hands in her lap.

"How do I know that one morning I won't wake up and you'll be…"

He was not using her. Not for the palace view, the fame, personal advancement, or sordid pleasures. He wasn't using the Princess in any of the ways people imagined. Rapunzel was innocent, kind, and good, and she'd turned his life around without even trying. He owed her everything. He would never repay her by using her the way she had been used her entire life.

He'd have to be one sick guy to do something like that to her.

He stretched out his hand to cover hers. "That won't ever happen. Most people aren't like Gothel. Even Lady Eva isn't anything like Gothel, you know?" He didn't want to sit opposite the woman at dinner anymore but these things had to be put in perspective. "I'm not like Gothel."

She nodded. "Of course not. You would have died for me."

"_You_ would have died for _me_," he reminded her, his fingers curling around hers. No one had ever had that kind of faith in him. Trusting him was generally a terrible idea, but she'd made him want to be trustworthy. "But I'm going to do you one better than dying, babe. I'm going to stick around, okay?"

"Lady Eva said…she said that…" She rubbed her cheek on the shoulder of her gown, fresh tears having sprouted. "I'm the only one, aren't I, Eugene?" she asked, her voice quavering.

_Lady Eva could go straight to…_

"The only one," he promised, squeezing her hand. Everything in him revolted against the thought of anyone else, even though their situation wasn't always exactly what he wanted. Even though she was a princess and there were guards waiting to stick him with the pointy end if he ever stepped out of line. "For as long as you'll have me. And after you're tired of me, I'll live just outside the palace walls," he explained, gesturing with his free hand toward the window, out to the imagined spot where he'd camp out, "living off those hot cross buns that one guy with the funny hat sells, so I can still be as close to you as possible."

Rapunzel sighed, "I'm not going to grow tired of you."

He feigned shock, his eyes growing large. "No? Are you sure? I can be a real pain in the ass."

"I know," she said, with a reluctant smile.

He nudged her with his shoulder. "You shouldn't agree with me so easily on that point."

"You're my favorite person."

And she knew more than a handful now.

"You're not just saying that to spare the feelings of an orphan?" he teased, bending down to kiss her brow. "With crippling abandonment issues?" he murmured against her skin.

She reached up and threaded her hand in his hair as it flopped forward. "I think I'm living in a glass house," she admitted, rubbing the tip of her nose against his.

_Yeah, something like that_, he thought with a shrug as he wrapped his arm around her and closed the distance between his lips and hers. The blood rushed in his ears, he forgot for a moment where he was, and all he was aware of was her lips and her hands clutching at his neck.

What he felt for Rapunzel was completely novel. No one in his life had ever elicited the knot of feelings inside of him that she did: he wanted to protect her and devour her, teach her terrible things and let her teach him how to do embarrassingly unmanly things, tuck her inside his vest where she would never be too far away and let her run and explore so he could watch her thrive. She was the center of his world. It could be overwhelming and disorienting, and not just because she sent him on an orbit less predictable than that of the planets she charted on her bedchamber ceiling in sunny yellow paint.

He had no practice saying the words that would have encompassed that heady jumble of feelings she so neatly and regularly summed up for him with just three words. Sometimes he imagined that if he said them back to her, they would sound false, like so much that came out of his mouth.

So, he'd tried to show her instead. With shared moments, with looks, with gestures, with dancing lessons. With kisses. But, maybe that wasn't enough.

He pulled back, clearing his mind of the Rapunzel muddle induced by lips and murmurs and sighs with a deep breath. "Anytime you have doubts, you come to me. I'll tell you how I feel."

She blinked, looking rightly surprised by his avowal. "You'll…just tell me how you feel?"

"Yep," he assured her with one cocked brow and a half smirk.

She narrowed her eyes at him, as if she did not quite believe him. "How much have you had to drink, _Eugene Fitzherbert_?"

That wasn't the question he had been expecting. "Uh…three beers."

"And how do you feel?"

"Sober as a judge. Ready and raring for whatever you have in mind." He waggled his brows.

"About _me_," she amended. "How do you feel?"

_With my fingers_. But that was just the sort of smart ass thing he was trying not to say.

His mouth opened and closed. He rubbed his chin. He pressed his lips into a thin line. He sighed and tilted his head to the side. He frowned until he felt certain that he looked far more fearsome than he intended.

She bit her lower lip and extended a slender finger to trace the length of his nose.

"I love you."

The words had left his mouth before she'd reached the tip.

He'd never said those words. Ever. To anyone. Not a mother. Not a sister. Not a girl or a dog. His pulse skipped and he felt his skin flush. For something this notable, there was a surprising lack of fireworks or trumpeters or official proclamations. Nothing to mark the occasion. But there was her smile. He smiled as her finger lingered there at the end of his nose, pressing it a little flat. He smiled, because she smiled back at him—a great big smile drawing her tearstained cheeks upwards into round little apples.

Rapunzel scrambled to her feet. "Come on," she said, holding out a hand to help him up. "Let's go find Mother and Father."

He hoped very much that his declaration wasn't going to be made public as soon as she located her parents, but unless he made it very clear that it was to be a Secret, Rapunzel was likely to tell someone. Or everyone. Privacy was something she didn't value, having personally been the best kept secret in the kingdom for eighteen years.

Feet underneath him, he brushed off the fine dust from his pants.

"Wait," he said, grabbing her wrist as her hand found the doorknob. "I mean it. I love you_." Just in case it hadn't sounded completely honest the first time_.

"That's twice," she said, holding up two fingers as her eyes twinkled in the moonlight. "And you usually only say it when you're drunk."


	6. Then He Kissed Me

6. Then He Kissed Me

"Each time I saw him I couldn't wait to see him again. I wanted to let him know that he was more than a friend."—_Then He Kissed Me_ by The Crystals.

* * *

><p>It wasn't only their first hiding place, it was their best. No one had ever found them here. Stone walls only did half the trick. They could have been seen from the south facing palace windows above if it wasn't for the spreading branches of the trees within the walls of the garden that kept prying eyes from discovering their location. Darkness helped too.<p>

"Hey," he said, drawing her attention to him and slowing her hurried pace towards the garden somewhat. "You wanna give it a try breaking in?"

At first they'd scaled the walls, him giving her a boost and then climbing up over the top after her, but after a snagged skirt that Rapunzel had some difficulty explaining—eschewing lies of any kind—Eugene had begun popping the heavy iron lock on the gate. An easy enough task with his ample background in such dubious activities. It wasn't as satisfying as lifting her up by her narrow waist, but her considerable awe at his breaking and entering skills almost made up for it.

"Me?" Her eyes lit up at the prospect of trying something new. Even as the pace of new discoveries slowed, her enthusiasm for them remained constant.

"Yep, you. I won't always be around to break into places for you, and you might have a late night hankering for something from the cellar or something. It'll be good practice."

Her face fell. "Where will you be?"

"Off on important state business. That's what all those boring meetings I attend are about. The King means to make me useful," Eugene said, sliding his hand into her hair and loosening a hairpin.

"Useful to more than me," she supplied, looking relieved.

Pulling the pin free, he held it out before her. "Yes, to more than you."

She glanced from the pin to the locked gate. "But…I don't know how."

He waved the hairpin before her, tempting her with the prospect of a new experience. "You've watched me do it dozens of times. I bet you'll manage it on the first go."

She looked at Pascal perched on her shoulder, as if for confirmation of the wisdom of Eugene's trust in her abilities, but Pascal merely shrugged and turned from the bright blue of her dress to a leafy green. He was looking forward no doubt to a romp in the lush vegetation within the walled garden and couldn't be bothered with the details of their entrance.

Rapunzel took the pin from him and squinted at the locked gate. He pushed her forward a nudge, the tips of his fingers resting in the small of her back, urging her to give it a try. Bending slightly over, she eyed up the lock and extended the pin to the keyhole. Her nimble fingers only prodded for a moment, and he nodded to himself as he heard the 'pop' of the lock giving way. Success was announced by her squeal and the squeak of the gate swinging open wide enough for them to fit through.

"I did it!" she exclaimed, hopping up and down, the hairpin clutched in her fist beneath her chin.

"Good job. You're a hardened criminal now."

She beamed back at him as if she was going to be given a plaque in recognition of that fact. _Princess of Corona, Most Promising Thief of the Year_.

Maybe he'd have one made for her. They could hang it in the Portrait Gallery next to her rendering of Pascal in oil.

Impressing Rapunzel with his skills was nice, but watching her blossom with pride at her own accomplishments was actually better.

He took the pin from her once more and tucked it somewhat awkwardly back where he thought it belonged, but it didn't look quite right. His hand lingered in her hair for a moment, as she continued to rock on her heels and nearly bubble over with glee. Finally, he bent down and stage-whispered in her ear, "I've been waiting to be alone with you all day, babe."

"Every time you see me, you can't wait to see me again," she giggled, as he nipped at her neck before she moved beyond his reach, slipping sideways through the gate.

He followed behind her. "Can you blame me?" he shrugged, tucking his hands in his pockets and shutting the gate with a tap of his boot heel.

"It's because I'm your best friend," she boasted, as she flopped down in the thick turf at the middle of the garden and kicked off her satin slippers.

As soon as she leaned back on her hands, Pascal jumped from her shoulder and skittered off for some appealing branch from which to survey the scene. _So_, not entirely alone. They were rarely, if ever, entirely alone.

"You're sure about that, Blondie?" he asked, as he crouched down in the grass.

She bobbed her head in certainty.

"What about Hook Hand? Maybe _he's_ my best friend, huh?"

"No," she said, scrunching up her nose, "he still isn't all that fond of you."

He clutched at his chest in feigned injury, collapsing to the ground alongside where she sat. "I thought I'd made a real impression on him the last time we attended one of his concerts. Really turned on the Flynn Rider charm."

She rolled her eyes, clearly not believing his act for one second. "You might have done better to just be Eugene," she suggested.

"Maybe. And since you seem to know everything, who's your best friend?" _Oh yeah, _he wastotally fishing.

She tilted her head, looking a little uncertain whether he was joking or not. "You of course. You're more than a friend, more than my best friend."

"That's right, lucky girl," he said smugly with a wink.

He patted the grass in a silent request that she lie down with him. He knit his fingers behind his head, as she scooted up against him and draped herself halfway across him, propping her chin up on her elbows atop his chest.

"And Pascal too," she amended. "He's my best friend too. I can have more than one, right?"

"Sure." As long as he was one of them, she could have as many best friends as she liked. He was her only more than best friend after all, so he could afford to be generous. "Can't forget him," he agreed, letting his eyes shut for a moment, so he could focus on the feeling of her slight weight rising with him with each breath he took.

This was about as close to perfect as things got. Why had he ever thought being alone on an island would be the best thing in the world? He wouldn't take all the money in the kingdom if it meant being without Rapunzel.

"Soon it will be too cold to meet out here at night," she observed, her shoulder rising slightly in the imitation of a shiver.

And that was enough to unravel the fantasy of his new dream. This moment was only temporary after all. There was always some rule, some responsibility, Something keeping them from being together the way he wanted them to be.

"You know," he considered, "when you're queen, you should outlaw winter. Target the real culprit. Not handsome, misunderstood heroes such as myself, but the dastardly season that conspires annually to keep us apart." Winter was supposed to drive young lovers inside to cuddle before roaring fires and find alternative forms of entertainment, but it didn't exactly work that way when your girlfriend was the Princess of Corona.

"You usually find a way to be with me, Eugene," she smirked.

He was nothing if not resourceful. A resourcefulness that drove the Queen especially crazy. It had led Eugene to the discovery that the Royal Buttery had a hallway with empty kegs, which turned out to be an excellent place not only to have a mug of ale, but also to be undisturbed with the Princess. That is until they'd been discovered sitting atop a keg that turned out not to be empty, but full of the particular brew the King had decided he'd like to tap for the evening. Not the worst thing he had ever been caught doing, but the situation was complicated by the fact that Eugene had finally egged Rapunzel into having more than a sip of his terrible tasting beer. As a result she couldn't stop giggling or confessing things to the Royal Brewmaster, Johan, who had discovered them. The King was spared such information. The Queen was not, however. If Eugene could have only kept a straight face when facing the Queen afterward, he might have come up with some cover story, but watching a tipsy Rapunzel was simply too much for even a Practiced Liar.

And his skills in that department were getting admittedly rusty.

"Problem solver extraordinaire, that's me."

"Besides, you can't arrest winter," she said, punctuating her assertion by poking him in the chest. "Winter is caused by the Earth tilting on its axis away from the Sun."

"If you say so," he said, sounding appropriately dubious. It was pretty cute when she waxed on about her studies, and sometimes he learned something.

"It is," she urged.

"Well then, maybe I'll just tilt the Earth the way I want it. Like that guy Atlas."

She shook her head, "You couldn't do that."

"No? I'm pretty strong. I can carry you up three flights of stairs, no problem. You want me to carry you up to your bedchamber to prove it?" It was a hollow offer: he knew better than to set foot inside her suite of rooms. The guards watched her room much more closely than they'd ever watched her crown.

"The Earth's circumference is over 40,000 kilometers." Her eyes grew large as she no doubt imagined the vastness of the Earth, of the mysteries that still awaited her outside of the kingdom of Corona.

"Okay, that's pretty big, but Atlas managed it," he pressed.

Rapunzel pursed her lips. "Atlas was a god, Eugene."

"So am I, babe," he said with a waggle of his brows.

She huffed dramatically, although she had to be used to his outrageous boasts by now.

Winter obviously couldn't be halted. Which meant they'd have to get creative, yet again. Unfortunately, the novelty of meeting each other in unusual places was only compelling for so long and then it became just downright frustrating.

"Besides," she mused, "when I'm queen, we won't have to sneak around."

His stomach tightened and he schooled his face to be totally neutral, waiting to see where she was going with this particular notion.

"No one will be able to stop us if we want to watch the stars," she finished.

_Ah, of course—stargazing_. "You realize you can't actually see the stars." That was the point ostensibly of their coming out here from time to time: stargazing. To look up at the stars and have her tell him what she knew about them—their movements, the shapes they made, the stories associated with those shapes. She'd told him some of the stuff half a dozen times, but he liked hearing her talk about it as they stared up at the night sky. But she was laying all wrong for that purpose. For his purposes, however…

"That's okay," she said, smiling sweetly at him.

_More than okay_. It would be hard to get up and walk her back inside tonight. Hard to say goodnight.

She stretched her hands out, resting them about his shoulders and tucking her head into the little valley in his chest. She fit perfectly there.

It wasn't the first time he'd noticed that the Lost Princess seemed as if she'd been made for him, an orphan and a thief. He hadn't thought he truly believed in love or trust or family, but she'd given all of that to him. Eugene Fitzherbert of all people. She'd swept in with her endless enthusiasm, innocence, and determination and shattered all his illusions. He didn't think anyone else could have done that. But then, he wasn't so sure anyone else could have helped Rapunzel adjust to her new life either.

She just fit. Or they fit together. All their jagged pieces.

He used to worry that she only loved him because he was the first guy to stumble across her tower. And because he didn't have fangs. That she'd wake up one morning and realize what a colossal mistake she was making.

He wasn't afraid anymore.

"Rapunzel." There really wasn't any reason for them to sneak around. No reason why he should have to say goodnight to her and part ways. He didn't have to wait through another winter to have her tucked up against him, watching the night's sky.

She mumbled something unintelligible in response.

"Marry me."

His heart might have stopped in the time it took for her to raise her head and meet his gaze, and there was no magical hair to bring him back again.

"Okay."

"Okay?" He had been expecting something more, some enthusiasm. On the rare occasion he had let himself consider what might happen if he asked his girl to marry him, after all the dancing lessons and stuffy meetings and veiled comments from the King and Queen, he had imagined that there would be flailing, squealing, and kissing perhaps. But, all she did was smile back at him with half-hooded eyes, looking a little sleepy. It was kind of disappointing. "So, uh, we're engaged then."

Her brow furrowed. "We are?"

Now he was thoroughly confused. "Well, you just said 'yes' to my proposal. That's usually a good indication of an engagement."

"Wait," she said, scrambling into a sitting position. "Wait," she demanded again, pushing at his arm in what seemed to be building excitement. "That was a _proposal_?"

"Well, um, not a very good one," he admitted, sitting up and scratching the back of his neck. Maybe he should have planned that out a little better.

"I didn't realize it was a marriage proposal," she squealed.

_There's the squeal_, he thought, instantly relieved. Something that had been tightly coiled in his chest began to unwind.

She threw her arms around him, nearly knocking him back into the grass, but he caught himself with one hand and wrapped the other arm around her, steadying them both.

As she peppered his neck with kisses, he raised one brow, still totally befuddled. "What did you think—_marry me_—was?"

"I don't know," she said, sitting upright. "General conversation, I guess. The way people always ask me—_are you going to marry that guy_—that guy's you," she clarified, talking animatedly, "and then I say—_yes_."

"You get that question a lot?"

"Sure. For ages now," she said, grinning back at him.

He rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. Why had he taken so long to man up and ask her, when he knew he loved her? Did he really think she was going to say 'no'? Or that maybe she should?

_Abandonment Issues_.

Someone should have smacked him upside the head. Or punched him in the arm—hard. But then again, maybe that's why Maximus was so overly fond of biting him of late. A bruise on his thigh smarted at the thought.

"Sorry, babe."

She leaned forward and kissed him on the corner of his mouth. "For what?" she asked, as she smoothed back his hair so enthusiastically that he knew it wouldn't fall the way he liked anymore when she was finished. "It was the most romantic proposal ever."

_Damn_. She was going to tell everyone about his pathetic excuse for a proposal and he didn't even have a ring to give her.

"In our secret garden," she continued, scrambling atop his lap, getting as close as she could, "which we discovered the first week we were together here at the palace. While stargazing! What could be more romantic?"

That made it sound a lot more thoughtful than it had been. "You weren't actually looking at the stars."

She waved her hand dismissively. "Nuance."

"I don't want to rain on your parade," he said, drawing his thumb over her flushed cheek, dotted with freckles he could barely make out in the darkness, "but I proposed because it simply struck me how awesome it would be if we were married and for once I didn't freak out and talk myself out of it."

"Isn't that how they're done?"

She deserved something elaborate. Something planned and perfect. Something that involved flowers and chocolates and poems and he didn't know what all else, but unfortunately that just didn't sound anything like him. "Not usually."

"Then maybe they should."

He couldn't help himself: he pulled her to himself for a kiss. A totally inappropriate kiss. A totally inappropriate, fantastic, intense kiss. A kiss he might give her anytime he liked soon enough, because there was no way he was going to wait through an endless engagement to marry his girl.

With Rapunzel he didn't have to play games or out do the last guy. _Well_, Philippe the pastry chef had proposed to her once after tasting her apricot tarts, so there was one previous proposal that Eugene was aware of, but Blondie didn't speak French and hadn't seemingly understood what the man's effusions were about. No competition there.

So what if his proposal was a little lackluster: it had made her happy. That's all he cared about.

That and it made him happy too. Really happy. Almost giddy. This was a _really good rush_.

"Are you sure you don't want a poem?" he asked, breaking the kiss to murmur low and throaty in her ear as he traced invisible patterns on her back.

Her breath hitched and she hummed as she tilted her head so that his lips touched her ear. He knew what she wanted: she liked when he kissed her just below her ear. Normally he would have obliged, but he paused, monitoring his labored breathing and waiting for her response.

"What…what kind of poem?"

Clearing his voice, he began, "There once was a lass named…"

"No," she laughed, pulling back and plastering a hand tightly over his mouth. She obviously knew better: he'd shared those kinds of poems with her before, but it was better to break the tension before Temptation got the best of him. "No, stop. It's perfect as it is Eugene."

He nodded against her hand, smiling as he mumbled, "M'kay."

"Where's Pascal?" she asked, twisting in his lap and letting her hand drop.

"I don't know. Look for something small and pink." And embarrassed.

"Ooh, he's up high," she said, disengaging herself from Eugene to stand up. "Get him down, please: I want to go to Mother and Father."

"Uh, it's way past midnight, babe," Eugene reminded her, although he was already moving to retrieve her frog from his high spot, where he had no doubt seen and heard it all. "They'll be asleep."

"That's okay. Mother said I should wake them up," Rapunzel explained, as she shook out her skirts.

He stopped, hand outstretched for Pascal. "Why would she want you to wake them up?"

"She was very specific that I should let them know—any hour of the day or night—when you'd stopped dragging your feet and asked already."

"Great," he grumbled half-heartedly, as he plucked Pascal from his branch.

"Isn't it? Daddy will be so pleased."

She clapped at the thought and his ego puffed a little bit. "You think so?" The King _did_ call him son.

"Yes, Mother is going to owe him twenty silver marks."

He rolled his eyes. "Good to know."

She gripped his arm, peering up at him in the moonlight, and all his pretense of aggravation melted away.

"I love you, Eugene."

"I love you too, Blondie."

THE END


End file.
